> I believe that if this would happen in a normal court case this would end in mistrial. Generally you cannot have a mistrial before having a trial. The trial

> I believe that if this would happen in a normal court case this would end in mistrial. Generally you cannot have a mistrial before having a trial. The trial hasn't started yet. ICC trials require the defendents to physically be present in the court room and the defendents have so far chosen not to surrender themselves (unsurprisingly). All that has taken place so far is the ICC equivalent of a grand jury procedure. > if he thinks moving forward with the trial will save him. There is evidence he pressured the victim precisely on the reason of this trial success, without a trial he will go to jail. Well at this stage, the warrants have been issued. There is still Israel's juridsictional challenge to them to deal with, but by and large this stage is done and there is nothing left to do. The next stage starts once the accused are aprehended. It seems really unlikely the ICC is going to be capture the accused, and it seems really unlikely they will self-surrender. The most likely outcome is that nothing further happens. The prosecutor has done his role. Maybe there could be some sort of argument like this if stuff was ongoing, but it isn't ongoing, so i just don't see it. [One thing i think that gets lost in these discussions that is really important to remember, is that the ICC prosecutor has a kind of bad conviction rate. In the unlikely event this actually goes to trial, we shouldn't consider it a foregone conclusion. The accused might win] > I think that if you take the fact that they completely ignored the principle of complementarity, claiming essentially Israel does not have an independent judiciary system, when said judiciary system is prosecuting Nethanyahu currently for a different crime while upping the irony when half of the ICC judges come from countries with actually non-functioning judiciary systems Thus far, it doesn't seem like Israel has made a serious good faith criminal investigation into the conduct in question. More to the point, it doesn't seem like Israel has even claimed that they intend to. It would make a big difference if Israel could point to someone and say we assigned this person to investigate the allegations, here is their report, they didn't think charges were warranted because X. Israel does generally seem to have an independent judiciary that is not afraid to go after people at the top. That is something to be proud of. However that in itself is not enough for complementary - there needs to be a criminal investigation of the same conduct as the ICC is worried about. > while ignoring the chance for the accused to plea The accused can plea any time they want. They first have to surrender themselves (or otherwise be aprehended). Entering a plea (or more generally defending yourself) is part of the process of a trial. The trial has to start first. > highly unusual arrest warrants against a current head of state Its a bit unusual, but certainly not the first time. They issued a warrant for Omar al-Bashir when he was president of Sudan.